Buried In Buttercream

brother, Macon, with a girlie magazine.
    She took one quick glance down at the front of his pants.
    Yep ... highly excited.
    He also looked highly annoyed.
    “Get outta here,” he said. “I don’t want company.”
    “Well, now ... that ain’t very neighborly of you,” she said, continuing to close the distance between them. “I just want a good look at the fire. That’s all.”
    “Look at it somewhere else,” he shouted, getting more agitated by the moment. “Leave me alone.”
    Then, under his breath, she heard him mutter, “You’re ruining it.”
    As she drew within ten feet of him, she could see his medallion clearly. And, yes, it was a pentacle, a large, inverted one, hanging on a thick chain, in the center of his chest.
    She wanted to glance back over her shoulder and see where Dirk was now. But she didn’t want to give away the fact that she had reinforcements on the way.
    Besides, Dirk had to have seen her continue on up the path. And knowing him as she did, she was certain he was now racing toward them, grubby sneakers barely touching the ground as he ran.
    He was a darlin’ ... if a pain.
    She stopped about six feet away from the guy and studied him carefully. Approximately five feet, six inches tall, weighing at most a hundred and thirty ... he wasn’t a very large man. She’d wrestled much bigger. And won.
    Even from that distance she could smell alcohol on him. His eyes looked glassy. His speech was slightly slurred when he said, “I’m not kidding, lady. You go someplace else to watch it. I was here first.”
    Taking one step closer, she fixed him with eyes so cold they would have given pause to someone more astute, someone less fixated on his sexual obsession.
    “Exactly what am I ruining for you?” she asked him in a deadly, even tone.
    “What?”
    “I heard you say I was ruining it for you. What’s that? The fire? Watching it?” She nodded her head in the direction of the blaze that had now completely engulfed the building below and was casting a lurid glow across the twilit landscape.
    He said nothing, but his breathing became heavier, faster as he stared at her, rage in his eyes.
    She felt a fury of her own welling up as she thought of the plans she’d had for this day ... this night.
    “You go setting fires to get your rocks off,” she told him. “You don’t give a tinker’s damn what it costs others.”
    He gasped, his eyes wide. “How ... how do you know? Who are you?”
    “I’m somebody who knows what a crazy twitch you are,” she replied. “You set these awful fires that destroy property, kill wildlife—and even people sometimes—and all because you’ve got crazy urges inside you that you can’t, or won’t, control.”
    He moved toward her. She braced herself... and wished she’d strapped on her weapon before leaving the house earlier.
    “What’s it to you?” he shouted in her face. “Mind your own damned business.”
    He tried to move past her.
    She blocked him.
    “Oh, it’s my business,” she replied, her voice soft and deceptively calm. “It’s very much my business.”
    “Get out of my way!” He reached out and shoved her, hard.
    A moment later, he was lying on the ground at her feet, curled into a ball, holding his head and moaning ... a small trickle of blood running down his forehead.
    She heard Dirk pounding up the hill toward her. She turned and saw him, panting, face red and sweating, his Smith and Wesson in his hand.
    “You can put that away,” she told him, nodding toward the drawn weapon. “He’s down.”
    “Yeah,” Dirk replied, gasping for breath. “I see that.”
    “She hit me!” the arsonist told Dirk as he knelt beside him and examined the damage to his forehead. “She’s crazy! She hit me for no reason ... really hard ... with her purse!”
    Savannah glanced down at her hand and realized for the first time that she was, indeed, holding her pocketbook. And apparently, without thinking, she had smacked him with it.
    “For no reason, huh?” Dirk said, reaching down and turning the pentacle medallion first one way, then the other.
    “Yeah. No reason at all. And her purse was really hard!” complained her victim. “And heavy! I think there’s a brick in it!”
    Dirk shook his head. “Naw. I know what she carries in her purse. Usually just some nail polish and a few candy bars.”
    Savannah hefted her handbag a couple of times, testing the weight.
    Yes, as a matter of fact, it did seem heavier than usual. It